


My [Your] Brain is Melting, Send Help

by Newtavore



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caretaking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Headaches & Migraines, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“...E.D, why the fuck are you on the floor?” you say, just a bit of an angry snarl colouring your tone; you’d thought he was fucking dead, okay, you have a right to be pissed, coming all the way out here just to find him napping-</p><p>“Sol,” he rasps, and god, he sounds terrible. He sounds fucking terrible, and when he lets his head loll to the side to look at you, he looks as bad as he sounds. Pale and drawn, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, eyes unfocused…</p>
            </blockquote>





	My [Your] Brain is Melting, Send Help

**Author's Note:**

> today is an erisol day

The Game is over.

 

It’s… surreal, almost. You’d thought that after all the shit that had gone down, there would be some difference, some alteration to your daily patterns and to your life, but… not so. You wake up in your ‘coon, as if the whole thing had been one terrible nightmare. You get up, and nothing has changed.

 

Everything is exactly as you’d left it, your bees drifting lazily around the space, their hives still dripping from the walls in strings of honeycomb and mothergrub boards, your computers still humming in quiet counterpoint to their soft buzzing… It’s exactly the same. When you check your chronodevice, it reads the day before everything went to fucking hell.

 

Time has reversed, and everything is back to normal.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard, at first, to adapt to regular life again but you think most everyone manages it. Things go calm, smooth out, and all twelve of you slowly get back into the swing of things.

 

Except you. You don’t understand, and that frustrates you _[because there’s no explanation, no logic, everything’s back to normal but it’s not normal and you don’t know why--]_.

 

You just… can’t. There’s something wrong, something missing, an empty spot in your brain that you can’t plug with any amount of code and a pit in your stomach that no abundance of greasy snacks and energy drinks can fill.

 

There’s something _gone_. There’s something missing from your head, your heart, your body, something not right about the way your horns are even on both sides, and the way your fingers sometimes stutter over certain letters as you type. There’s something not _right_ about the way your voice sounds when you talk to yourself, arguing with your bees over code and the proper care and feeding of trolls, because the little monsters have taken over making sure you don’t kill yourself through sheer neglect since Karkat is too busy to.

 

There’s something not right about the sound of other people yelling and crying and being noisy, annoying assholes outside your window, something not right about the sound of cars and city traffic outside the door of your communal hivestem block.

 

It’s only after you have to go back into the lines of code and fix the seventh doubled ‘w’ in as many minutes that you realize what’s wrong, and what’s missing.

 

It’s a revelation you don’t exactly welcome, because of course, it’s _him_. He’s the missing piece of you, his stutter is why your voice doesn’t sound right, his quirk is why you keep stumbling over code you’ve typed a million times. It’s his fault, and when you shoot him off a message… he doesn’t respond.

 

No one’s heard from him.

 

He’s just disappeared off the face of the planet, except F.F says she can still see lights on his ship, sometimes. He’s just being a brat, as usual, avoiding everyone _[you, avoiding you-]_ in some misguided fucking temper tantrum, like he always does _[except you've never heard of him being gone this long, he always crawls back-]_.

 

Even Karkat, who’s at least been getting “I’m alive” messages from him every other day or so, says he hasn’t heard from him in three.

 

You can’t hear his voice in your head anymore, but the important part is that you can’t hear his _voice_ , so you don’t think he’s dead, or dying. Still, your hands refuse to stop shaking until you decide to pay him a visit- just to see how badly he’s fucked himself over this time, is all. That’s it.

 

You grab a bag and leap out your window, drifting to the ground in a cloud of red and blue. His hive is in the middle of the goddamn ocean _[he’s always such a fucking inconvenience but oh the ocean, the ocean is the sound you’ve been missing-]_ but you suck it up and drift over the calm waters, going slow so as not to drag the ever-present headache to the foreground of your mind. You need a clear head for this _[whatever this is, whatever you’re planning on doing]_.

 

There are no lights in his ship when you get there. There’s nothing, no lights, no smoke, no signs of life, and you wonder if you’d have had enough time to hear him, if he’d been dashed upon the rocks, or had fallen off a cliff, or had been eaten by some mighty beast. You wonder if you would have had time to hear him screaming if he’d died a sudden death.

 

Your footsteps echo on the salt-weathered wood, and the door creaks open when you tap it with the tips of your fingers. Are you in a horror movie? You think so, if the one flickering, bare lightbulb at the end of the hallway is any indication. You are in a horror movie. You are the idiot who goes running in half cocked and gets murdered in the first five minutes, it is you. But you _need_ him. You can feel a tug, a draw, like opposite poles of magnets attracting, and you take first one step, then another, and another until you’re running down hallways like you know them better than anything else. Like you’ve lived here your entire life, and you suppose you have in some weird, roundabout way, through him.

 

The further in you run, the darker it gets, until you can only see by the light of your eyes. You don’t even notice him lying on the floor until you trip over him, falling to the ground beside him with a startled yelp _[not that you’d admit it, you don’t fucking yelp-]._

 

Oh, but the sound he makes. It pierces your heart, that fucking pathetic goddamn whimper that spills from his lips as you roll over, pushing yourself up onto your knees. He’s lying on the floor like he’d had his strings cut, limbs splayed, hands buried in his hair. His glasses are on the floor beside him, and you move them aside, taking their place.

 

“...E.D, why the fuck are you on the floor?” you say, just a bit of an angry snarl colouring your tone; you’d thought he was fucking dead, okay, you have a right to be pissed, coming all the way out here just to find him _napping_ -

 

“Sol,” he rasps, and god, he sounds terrible. He sounds fucking terrible, and when he lets his head loll to the side to look at you, he looks as bad as he sounds. Pale and drawn, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, eyes unfocused…

 

“I hate you,” he whimpers, closing his eyes and curling in on himself, breath making his thin chest rise and fall with a worrying irregularity, “I hate you an’ your stupid brain, an’ your stupid headaches, I feel like I’m gonna _die_ -”

 

Migraine, you think, and everything clicks into place. Of all the things you would have wished upon Eridan, all the things you had wished upon him, once upon a time, your headaches had never been one of them. You wouldn’t have dumped  those upon anyone, not for all the money and computer parts in the world, but now it seems as if he’d gotten the brunt of it, all at once. You’d at least had time to build up a tolerance to the pain as they’d grown worse and worse- not so for him.

 

“Nice to see you too, moonshine,” you murmur, dropping your volume down to near inaudible levels _[because god, loud voices hurt, your yelling had to have hurt him]_ , “I come in to check on you, and this is what I get? I feel really appreciated here, E.D, you have no fucking idea.”

 

You lean over him and tilt his head up, one hand smoothing his hair back from his forehead; he’s cool to the touch, but not cold, and you sigh, sparks cracking as they wrap around his lanky frame.

 

“C’mon, let’s get you somewhere a bit more comfortable than the floor, okay?”

 

He whines at the movement and you allow him to settle in your arms, though most of his weight is still supported by your powers. You know he must be feeling some nasty fucking vertigo right about now, and you know that something to ground him would help him, hopefully, not barf all over everything near and dear to the both of you. You’d had warming tarps you’d cocooned yourself in so tightly, you thought you’d emerge a winged insect; he has you, now.

Your grip remains tight even as your feet wander down hallways, navigating with stolen memories until you reach a living room and a couch- the worn, comfy one, small and slightly cramped, not the ostentatious one he uses for visitors. His grip on you remains tight even after that, his fingers curled in a death hold on your shirt, brow furrowed in shared pain.

 

“If I’m going to get you shit to help, you need to let go of me,” you say, softly; you’re not sure where this tone of voice is coming from, but dear god, it sounds strange, coming from you.

 

He apparently thinks so too, because he snorts and reaches out with shaky hands to push at your face, one palm squishing your nose into the side of your cheek.

 

“I think I’m dyin’,” he mumbles, and you set him down on the couch with a roll of your eyes, though you’re careful with him all the same. You know that even with his penchant for melodrama, he’s not exaggerating this time. You know that before this, the only headaches he’s ever had were from exhaustion and not wearing his glasses, and you know that that pain is nothing compared to what he’s in right now, and what you go through on a fairly regular basis.

 

“You aren’t dying,” you say, and you meant to sound biting, but it comes out far more sympathetic than you’d intended.

 

“No, I’m pretty sure I am.”

 

He’s slurring his words, his ‘s’s coming out a bit softer than usual, the beginnings of a lisp; you think that he’s been missing you just as much as you’d missed him. His hand, trembling, claws bitten to the quick, stops pushing at your nose and ghosts over your cheek, fingers brushing against the bags under your eyes.

 

“Computer junkie,” he mumbles, with a degree of familiarity and somewhat patronizing affection that would have made you bristle, under normal circumstances. But you’d shared a brain with him, shared a mind, shared a consciousness; he knows you just as well as you know him, and so you just nod, taking his hand in your own and pushing it back down on the couch.

 

“Y’need to sleep more,” he chastises, and you can’t help the scoff that falls from your lips as you sling your bag from your shoulder and drop into onto the table quietly, digging through the front pockets for the bottle of meds you never go anywhere without; you’re not sure how it’ll affect him, because this is enough to tranquilize a horse and it barely makes a dent in your own pain, thanks to your metabolism, but he’s smaller than you, if not shorter, even if he is a higher blood.

 

“Sure, I’ll start sleeping more as soon as you do. And how long have you been lying on the floor? Long enough to be dehydrated, Mr. Droopy Fins, that much is clear.”

 

“Yeah, well, when’s the last time you drank anythin’ other than that processed crap you call an energy drink?” he counters, and while he’s right, you’re still the only one capable of walking upright for now, so you at least have that victory to lord over his head.

 

“Says the person who’s flat on his back, too dizzy to stand,” you mutter, fetching a glass of water from the kitchen, “Just shut up, talking’s not going to make your head feel any better, alright?”

 

He makes a noise of complaint, but quiets down obediently enough when you tap his cheek with the tips of your fingers. You’re careful to keep the touch light; you know how overwhelming it is for him, after going so long without.          

 

“Think you can take a few pills?” you ask, and he blinks, staring down at the chalky white tablets in your hand, each about as wide around as your thumbnail. They’re a nasty set, alright, and hard as hell to choke down, but they’re the only thing you’ve found to work against the rampant pain in your skull.

 

“You want me to swallow that shit?”

 

“No, I want you to shove them up your ass, E.D. I am giving you a handful of fucking suppositories right now- of _course_ I want you to swallow them. Geez, you’d think a mighty fucking Orphaner would be a bit braver, but no, here we see the natural predator in his native state, cowering behind a pillow at the sight of the motionless, defenseless _medication_ -”

 

“Your voice is gratin’,” he says, and you smile at him, fangs bared, medication proffered. You feel almost bad about bullying him like this, but you can see the lines of pain on his forehead, and his bitten lips, and the way he can’t even sit up without listing to the side. He’s putting up an admirable front, but he needs the pills, even if he’d rather not take them.

 

God, he’s so pathetic.

 

“Just take the pills, you wriggler,” you murmur, reaching out to rub your thumb over the furrow in his brow, his skin lukewarm to the touch.

 

He leans into your hands with the sort of adoration you’ve only seen from barkbeasts, his fins low and drooping around his shoulders; a choked off purr forces its way from his dry throat, and you can’t stop the way your ears twitch in response, your hand pressing up against his cheek as you hold a pill to his lips.

 

He takes it without complaint and you sort of want to hit him for it; he’s so fucking pathetic it makes your chest burn, and it’s even worse, knowing why. It’s just… it’s so hard to hate him when you’ve been inside his head, when you’ve seen every last reason and justification and explanation for his actions, and yes, he made some really fucking shitty choices, and he’s a shitty person, and his reasons and justifications for doing things are just as shitty as his personality but… but he’s just so hard to _hate_ , now.

 

You sigh, and press the glass of water to his lips; he chokes down the pill with minimal fuss, then the second, and drains the rest of the water when you prompt him to drink, like he hasn’t tasted it in days. He might have not- you still don’t know how long he’d been curled up on the floor.

 

“Those’ll take about an hour to kick in,” you say; he groans in response, and you let him fall back on the couch, bracing his head with your hand so he doesn’t knock it on anything on the way down.

 

“Just relax, and try to think about something else,” you say, even though you know it’s futile. You’d wanted to stab the people who’d fed you that bullshit before, and from the way he’s eyeing the decorative sword on the mantelpiece- though his eyesight is so bad he can probably only see the barest outline of it- he’s thinking along the same lines.

 

“I know it sounds stupid, but it works. I usually just code through them now- the distraction helps.”

 

You sit on the couch, one arm slung over the back of it. He hesitates in such an obvious, fucking pathetic manner that you can’t help but roll your eyes [ _if you keep doing that with the force you have been, they’re going to fall out and leave you blind again]_ ; you grab him under his arms, hands instinctively settling right above his gills, and you pull him to you, poking at him till he curls up against your side, his head and upper chest on your lap.

 

“I thought you were supposed to be a fish, not a barkbeast,” you murmur, and he hisses at you weakly, coiling around you like a snake. Your hand curls over the base of his skull and he calms, lets out a little huff of breath through his gills as he relaxes. Your other hand settles on his head, fingers threading through his hair, and he shudders, limp against you except for the tight, tension-knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders.

 

“Just relax,” you repeat, and you are not good at this shit, you are not good at this- this _conciliatory_ stuff, but you have to try or else he’s going to give himself an aneurysm. His brain might actually explode, and then you’d be covered in nasty violet goop and you’d also promised him he wouldn’t die, so there’s that too.

 

“‘S hard,” he mumbles, his hands clutching the leg of your pants as if it holds all the answers to life, the universe, and everything, “Hurts.”

 

“You’re preaching to the choir,” you say, the human phrase falling from your tongue with ease; it’s only been a perigree or two since you’d woken up from the nightmare that was the Game, after all. The living nightmare, that all of you had unanimously believed couldn’t possibly have been a mass hallucination.

 

You’ve never been so sure of that yourself until this moment, with Eridan right beside you, the burning pit of platonic dislike stifled into something resembling… pity.

 

Something drastic had to have happened, to bring you to pity him.

 

“I know it hurts, but you have to trust me,” you say, your hands moving on their own; one rubs over the bases of his horns _[they’ll be sore, you know they’re sore, your horns always start hurting right before a bad one]_ , and the other presses blunt tipped fingers against the hollow behind his fin, smoothing little circles over the soft spot.

 

“I know what I’m doing, remember? I’m the smart one here.”

 

He growls, teeth closing weakly around the curve of your thigh, but there’s no force in the bite. The worst he can do is drool on you, right now, so you let him do as he wishes while you try to offer what little relief you can, while the two of you wait for the pills to kick in.

 

“‘S too quiet here,” he says, muffled, eyes squeezed shut even as his fin twitches into your fingers, “There’s-”

 

“There’s something missing, right?” you say with a sigh, because of course he feels like something’s missing- hadn’t you thought something was missing, too? His nod only confirms what you already know.

 

Your laptop is in your bag, and it’s easy to fish out with your psionics, the red and blue sparks setting it on the table and popping open the b33 drive. A few of the little buggers zip out, then a few more, then a few more, until sixteen of the insects are crawling over your arms and fluttering their wings against your cheeks, the soft hum of beenary drifting into your aural canals.

 

With your hands on Eridan like this, you can feel him relax, some of the tight line of tension in his shoulders loosening when two or three find their way into his hair, blending in with the purple streak like his vanity is their natural habitat.

 

“I used to hate bees,” he mumbles, fins twitching when one lands on his nose and does a little wiggle, alternating hums chastising him about not taking care of himself, just as they do you;  he knows what they’re saying, he knows because you know, and at one point, the two of you had been one.

 

“I used to hate the ocean,” you reply, and he falls quiet, allowing you to run your hands through his hair and pet him, allows you to ease some of the horrible ache behind his eyes and beneath his horns, his body reacting to a stressor that doesn’t even exist in his highblood genes.

 

There’s silence, after that. As silent as it can be, anyways, with the bees and the ocean and the rusty, quiet hum of his purr. For a while, you think he’s actually asleep; it’s only when he shifts under your hands, and his purr hitches in his throat, that you realize he’s still with you, for now.

 

“...Sol?”

 

“I thought I told you to stop talking,” is all you say in response, and he makes a soft noise of protest, wriggling around till he can look up at you, eyes half open and glazed over with receding pain.

 

“What… what’re we doin’?” he asks, and you wish he hadn’t, because fuck if you know. You’re just as clueless as he is, perhaps worse off. Actually, probably not worse- at least you’d had semi successful relationships _[yeah you’d killed one girlfriend and watched the other one die but still-]_.

 

He, on the other hand…

 

Dear god, his interpersonal disasters had been brought to full light, during your time together, and he’s even more of a mess than you’d thought.

 

You sigh, again, deep and heavy; your hands scritch over the bases of his horns, and he relaxes just a tad bit further, as if assured you aren’t going to throw him out. As if you could, the stupid ass- it’s his fucking hive, after all. Briefly, you remember getting locked out of your _his_ hive by Vriska, who laughed as she ransacked your _his_ things, setting half of them on fire. It’s not your memory, it’s his, but it’s enough to prove a point; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been locked out of his own home.

 

“Something,” you finally say, soft and fragile, just like whatever strange emotion strangles you whenever you look at his pathetic fucking face, “It’s… we’re doing something.”

 

“That’s not exactly informational, Sol,” he bites out, brow furrowing; you’re surprised he doesn’t have wrinkles, with all the furrowing his brow seems to be doing, lately.

 

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him smile, memory or no.

 

“I don’t know,” you say, a desperate edge to your tone _[because you are desperate, god you have no clue what you’re doing--]_ , “I just… don’t… I miss you.”

 

A bee settles on one of your smaller horns, piddling about the yellow strip as if poking at it long enough will make it produce pollen. None of them ever seem to learn that you aren’t actually part flower.

 

“...I miss you too.”

 

Why does this have to be so awkward? The silence almost hurts, and you aren’t usually one who feels the need to fill it. You can’t imagine how uncomfortable this must be for Eridan, the chatty bastard.

 

“I don’t hate you anymore,” he says, soft as bee’s wings, voice cracking just a bit at the end, and god, he’s just so fucking pathetic you can’t bring yourself to shove him off your lap and kick him like you’d wanted to for so long, before the huge mess of the Game, and Erisolsprite.

 

“I don’t hate you either.”

 

He sits himself up, wavering pathetically, and tucks his head under your chin, pressing as close to you as possible, as if he’s trying to melt through your skin, as if he’s trying to dissolve back into you, and maybe he is, you don’t know. You don’t think you’d mind, if he managed it.

 

You reach up and cup his head to your chest, and resign yourself to being slowly strangled to death by the feeling you refuse to admit is pity.

  
  
  



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